The two things that I genuinely enjoyed about this election cycle were the end of the Bush dynasty, and the end of the Clinton machine. I don't think badly of the Bushes, but America does not need nor would it benefit from developing an aristocracy or dynastic tradition. Seeing Jeb Bush go down, with no disrespect to the man personally, struck me as a moment of great democratic health for our nation.
Seeing the Clinton machine rejected and run up on the rocks is far sweeter yet. All the 'powers that be' were aligned to set them over us, to rule us by lies and by power, and instead the American people broke them.
For those two things I am deeply grateful. Both of them, I notice, align with Caddell's paradigm. The American people are demanding something other than rule by the few, the connected, the well-born, those sent to the finest schools, or employed at the finest companies. That is deeply, vibrantly healthy. It was something I feared our nation had lost.
This is precisely the reason our Founding Fathers wanted a republic with a small central central government. In the last 80+ years we have expanded the size and scope of the federal government to a point where the nation simply can't afford so much "help". Frankly, it's not so much ideology as it is math....the numbers just don't work when the federal gov't consumes everything from revenues to personal liberty. Ultimately, "something" will break and (hopefully) last night was that something.
ReplyDeleteWe must return to a form of gov't that maximizes individual liberty and reduces the expanse of a "do everything" federal gov't, and if we don't, it won't matter to the left, right, or middle because the crushing weight of debt will crush us all.
God Bless the Republic!
Maybe the Left will be willing to listen to a "let's reduce the scope of Federal control over everyone's life" argument today.
ReplyDeleteAll I can do is Grin.
ReplyDeleteToday it is Grins Hall, rather than Grim's hall.
-Mississippi
My satisfaction at seeing Jeb Bush go down was not so much a matter of dynasties—although I am not happy with the idea of powerful political families monopolizing the presidency, of course—as of backroom party selection. Jeb was clearly the designated candidate of the Republican establishment, chosen by them before any actual campaigning (let alone voting) had taken place, and the role of the Republican Peasantry was to obediently march to the polls and vote for him. It did my heart good to see the voters having none of it.
ReplyDeleteAnd it greatly amused me to watch the response of the aforesaid establishment to this. They couldn't believe the Peasantry was disobeying. They clung to the moldering corpse of the Jeb campaign for months after it was clear he wasn't going to win the primaries. (In fact, it's likely why Trump ended up as the nominee: they wanted Jeb so much that they couldn't settle on support for someone who actually might have beaten Trump for the nomination.)
I could not agree more with everything you wrote in this post. Our country needed this.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't Trump fall into all of those categories--the few, well-connected, well-born,etc.?
ReplyDeleteHe's only well-born in the sense of being born rich. His degree is from a state school (University of Pennsylvania).
ReplyDeleteHe is out of the mold in other ways, less praiseworthy, such as being a boor. Nor does he come from established American families (as even Obama did on his mother's side, where he is a cousin to George Washington) -- all of his grandparents were immigrants.
Whether or not it's very wise to have departed this far, he is a real departure from the kind of people we've elected in the past. And he's not a Bush nor a Clinton, which is at least one point in his favor.
Penn -- University of Pennsylvania -- is an Ivy League school. The state school is Penn State -- Pennsylvania State University. Common mistake around here. Trump attended the somewhat elite Wharton School of Business within Penn.
ReplyDeleteHe's only well-born in the sense of being born rich. His degree is from a state school (University of Pennsylvania).
ReplyDeleteNO NO NO NO NO. The University of Pennsylvania, a.k.a Penn, is an Ivy League school. Trump did start out at Fordham, which is a Catholic school, definitely not elite, and transferred to the Wharton School of Finance & Commerce @ Penn. According to the Wiki article on Trump, he transferred to the Wharton school @ Penn because it had one of the few programs in real estate.
BTW, the Wharton MBA has a pedigree close to the Harvard MBA. Trump didn't get a Wharton MBA, but a BS in Economics from Wharton.
Trump wasn't a lazy rich kid. He wanted to work in the family business, and did so during his college years. His degree was directly connected to his working in the family business. Yes, Trump was born on third base, but instead of deciding to sit on third base all his life, he decided to run for home plate. By comparison, look at the trust fund Kennedys.
Oh, OK. My mistake. The University of Georgia is sometimes referred to as part of the "Southern Ivys," but it's not in any sense an Ivy League school. It's the flagship state school, and the oldest public college in the United States (1785), but it's all the same a state school.
ReplyDeleteMississippi
ReplyDeleteTel Aviv is smiling too, since HRC won't be on their side any more than Hussein was.
The theory that DC, Hollywood, and Tel Aviv controls the Nation of the United States sounds good, but it's ice cream and opiates for the masses. Not high level analysis.